Social platforms which felt they could maintain their status as 'just a platform' and avoid the implications of bearing publishing responsibility are also realising that this is untenable. What follows will reshape journalism more profoundly than we once could have imagined. This might be good news for consumers, but in terms of civic and democratic health, the jury is still out.

'The internet and social media have empowered the PR trade and freed it from subservience to the news media.' This was the provocative starting point for an RSA debate recently, which also asked what this premise meant for the future of journalism and, more importantly, the future of public interest.

I have been blogging now for over a decade. In fact, I have watched blogs mutate from the original form of 'web-logging' that was just like keeping an online diary to the present-day where most people get their news about the world from blogs.

Chelsea Manning should have her crushing 35-year sentence commuted by President Obama to the three-and-a-quarter years she's already spent behind bars awaiting trial and sentence... What purpose is there in further punishing a woman who has, when all's said and done, helped publicise deeply troubling incidents.